Wheel-Lock pistol, a pair with A1188. The barrel is octagonal at the breech, the rest polygonal, finished at the breech and muzzle with narrow moulding. Inscribed on the top plane at the breech:

LAZARINO COMINAZZO

Lock. Wheel with ring-shaped bearing-plate chiselled with foliage. The cock has a baluster-shaped arm ending in acanthus ornament. Lock-plate flat and free from decoration. On the inner side is stamped a maker's mark.

Stock of dark walnut, slightly carved in places with leaf ornament and with longitudinal ribs along the fore-end, and decorated with steel inlays delicately pierced with intricate foliage and monsters in the Brescian style. The butt-cap, which is pierced en suite with foliage and monsters, has a button chiselled as a grotesque mask. Trigger formed as a dolphin. On the left side is a steel belt hook. Ramrod with chiselled baluster-shaped tip.

Italian (Brescian), about 1640.

A similar mark occurs on the lock of a pistol in the German Historical Museum, Berlin, the barrel of which is also by Lazarino Cominazzo. Also on the locks of a wheel-lock gun at Turin (N 23), and of a pair of pistols with barrels by Lazarino Cominazzo in the Livrustkammeren at Stockholm (inv. no. 20/9).

The mark on the lock appears to be the initials GL accompanied by a hand in a plate gauntlet grasping a slipped flower. It is N. Støckel, I, p. 736, no. b2249, dated about 1635. See also Gaibi, op. cit., 1978, p. 47, no. 32, where he attributed this mark tentatively to Cristoforo Lazaroni, 1590 to 1637. It also accurs on a wheel-lock pistol in the Odescalchi Collection, Rome (inv. no. 36; Carpegna, 1975, no. 22, with a list of other marked examples). A wheel-lock pistol in the Royal Armouries (no. XII.732) bears this mark, as does a pair of wheel-lock 'Wender' pistols in Stockholm (K. Livrustkammeren, nos. 4719-20), which came from the Keller-Sachovskoj armoury in St. Petersburg. A. Gaibi (loc. cit., 1978), attributed the barrels to Lazarino Cominazzo il Vecchio (1631 to about 1660).